We’re Still Doing This, Apparently: the Mission to Earthphase Moonshine Gold is Revealed
There’s almost nothing you can say to convince me the latest MoonSwatch, the not so elegantly named Mission to Earthphase Moonshine Gold, is not the product of a ChatGPT prompt entered by a Swatch exec. Maybe it said “What should the next entry in our never ending profit squeezing machine that is the MoonSwatch collection be called?” I can imagine an artificial intelligence suggesting something as silly, and also reminding the good people at Swatch that blue, and gold, and Snoopy are all very critical design characteristics that should be included.
Honestly, I hope AI is the culprit. I’d hate to think that human beings at a brand that I hold in such high regard are responsible for such a shallow mismatch of buzzwords and incoherent thematic elements. Let’s take stock of what we’re looking at here. This is a Bioceramic, quartz MoonSwatch much like all the others. It follows the original Earthphase model from last year and includes not just a moonphase complication, but an “Earthphase” that depicts the “phase” of the earth as seen from the moon. Useful? No. Whimsical? Perhaps.
There are a lot of little details though that are a bit of a grab bag of prior elements of MoonSwatches and Speedmasters of the past. Most notably, Snoopy and Woodstock are depicted right on the dial, watching the cosmic dance play out in front of them. The moons on the moonphase indicator are MoonShine gold plated. The graphical inspiration for the moonphase complication is the “sturgeon moon,” which is why the moon is depicted in a fishing net. The minute track, moon and earth discs, and chronograph seconds hand have an aventurine-like finish, although we suspect this is a printed texture and not actual aventurine (which just wouldn’t make sense on the hand). The earth disc in the 9:00 register reacts to UV light, and there’s a “secret” Snoopy Easter egg that is also UV reactive. Oh, and the case is dark blue BioCeramic.
Yikes. That’s a lot. Needless to say, if you’re looking for a minimal and discreet execution of the MoonSwatch, this is not it. But if you’re looking for something that kind of evokes the Omega Silver Snoopy 50th Anniversary Speedmaster, well, you’re in luck. Or, more likely, you’re probably not, as the Mission to Earthphase Moonshine Gold will only be available in select Swatch stores for one day, August 9.
Just as it seemed like we were escaping the age of the hype watch, we’re pulled back in with a MoonSwatch shrewdly loaded with “stuff” that feels like it was pulled from several projects in various states of progress. There’s a real throwing pasta at the wall sensibility here, as if the team charged with coming up with these releases (or the AI, whatever) had a very late night at HQ looking at all the things people are discussing in the watch world at this very moment and decided to put all of them into one plastic Speedmaster homage. The result is a watch that feels completely predictable, even as I can’t quite believe it exists.
Yes, I’m a bit cynical about the state of the MoonSwatch. These watches haven’t been fun to discuss from an enthusiast’s perspective for a long time now. It’s clear that they exist as a way for Swatch to command a minute or two of attention from the general watch buying public and the media, and generate some quick guaranteed revenue, and one assumes quite a bit of profit on each watch sold (I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the production costs of Swiss watches, but would love to know how much Swatch spends on each MoonSwatch that makes it to market). And, since you’re reading this on a watch website, the strategy is obviously “working” to a certain extent. But I wonder about diminishing returns and, more generally, fatigue among consumers with the same idea played out over and over again in ways that are only marginally distinctive from one another.
The retail price on the Mission to Earthphase Moonshine Gold is $380. More here.
The post We’re Still Doing This, Apparently: the Mission to Earthphase Moonshine Gold is Revealed appeared first on Worn & Wound.
from Worn & Wound https://ift.tt/fn0phdu
Comments
Post a Comment